I've always loved Rachmaninov's TheIsle of the Dead, not just because it's a fine piece of music, but also because of its Weird-Tales-esque title, which makes me think of it as the symphonic equivalent of a great Clark Ashton Smith story.

@miguel: Irreversible, painful ;_;
@Nirvana: That was pretty good, reminds me of BioShock.
@ramonoski: Unshed tears. I didn't know Beethoven until now.
@ChildofLeech: Thank to you I'll have to look into modern opera now.
@Vice: The strings are heavenly and yet somber. Beautiful.
@Pharpetron: Isle of the Dead is also one of my favorite. I believe Rachmaninov was inspired by a black and white painting similar to this

Pavane for A Dead Princess. This is my favorite piano rendition. I believe it suits the title's sentiments more than Ravel's version. (He believed it should be played faster, and that the title had nothing to do with his composition).

"So in the end it remains advisable to accept whatever comes, to behave like an inert mass even if one feels oneself being swept away, not to be lured into a single unneccesary step, to regard others with the gaze of an animal, to feel no remorse, in short to crush with one's own hand any ghost of life that subsists, that is, to intensify the final quiet of the grave still further and let nothing beyond that endure." ---Franz Kafka, Resolutions

Your fall should be like the fall of mountains. But I was before mountains. I was in the beginning, and shall be forever. The first and the last. The world come full circle. I am not the wheel. I am the hand that turns the wheel. I am Time, the Destroyer. I was the wind and the stars before this. Before planets. Before heaven and hell. And when all is done, I will be wind again, to blow this world as dust back into endless space. To me the coming and going of Man is as nothing.

Speaking of Benjamin Britten, Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten ranks among my favorite pieces of classical music. It's one of those pieces of music that I listen to continuously -- very few weeks pass without me listening to it at least once.

"So in the end it remains advisable to accept whatever comes, to behave like an inert mass even if one feels oneself being swept away, not to be lured into a single unneccesary step, to regard others with the gaze of an animal, to feel no remorse, in short to crush with one's own hand any ghost of life that subsists, that is, to intensify the final quiet of the grave still further and let nothing beyond that endure." ---Franz Kafka, Resolutions